The Hockey PDOcast - Goalie Matchmaker This Offseason

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Kevin Woodley to talk about the fit between Jacob Markstrom and the Devils, Darcy Kuemper in Los Angeles, the best spots for Linus Ullmark, and his favourite under the radar available options If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

progressing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name is Dimitra Filippovich and joining me here in studio is my good buddy Kevin Woodley. Kevin, what's going on, man? It's summer. Almost. No.

Sort of. No, the Stanley Cup final is still happening. Yeah. And frankly, up until this last week, the weather hasn't really felt like summer either. I mean, I see there's snow in Alberta right now. So it's summer for me. Yeah. Because if there is a game seven, I will be in a warm, sunny place by the time they drop the puck on it.

So summer officially starts when Kevin goes surfing, and that's what's happening next week. So I figured it would be an active offseason for goalie movement with the number of big names reportedly available, right? And we know that there was a bunch of these guys were still available at the deadline, but we know in-season moves at this position don't necessarily happen. So it kind of got backlogged to this off-season. Teams are interested. We expected things would happen. And realistically, I think that's probably going to be the case. every year with the way

goalie contracts are kind of headed. I know that we're going towards this spot where I'm sure Sirkin's going to maybe reset the market a little bit. We'll see with Soros. We saw Soros. We saw Sorokin get paid last summer. But for the most part, teams have kind of wised up to the unpredictability and volatility at the position.

And so they're wary to give out term. And so what that means for us here in the media industry is that every summer, we're going to basically get to spin the goalie carousel and see a lot of movement at the position and guys switching teams and that's great. Now, I think this is going to be an especially prolific one because we are not even technically into the offseason yet, as we noted, the Stanley Cup final is still going on

and we've already seen two big name goalies on the move in Jacob Markstrom and Darcy Kemper. And so that is a great pivot point here for us and perfect timing for us to get together to size up the market, break those moves down, break down what other future goalie acquisitions will see along the way and kind of have some fun with it. So let's start with the Markstrom move to the devils because you and I have spoken about this fit a couple times already, right? There was a lot of speculation that would happen near the deadline. We sort of size that up at the time.

Not much has necessarily changed because we know what the devils were last season. We know what Markstrom did himself individually. But I want to get into it now that we actually finally have it ready to go. What are your thoughts on the fit there and kind of how he projects to look in New Jersey and whether it's as not foolproof, but as nice of a fit between team as player as it seems to be at least on paper. Yeah, nothing's foolproof, obviously,

and especially when you add in. Like, obviously we can, you can't quite plug goalie A into Team X and expect it to work out perfectly, although as we did, you know, back at that point, I remember, you know, the numbers at least suggested around the All-Star break

or before the trade deadline, we'd be looking at something like 42 goals saved replaced the two guys starting with Jacob Markstrom, although obviously he's not playing every game. And I think that's doubly so because you have a new coach going in. And at the end of the day, the one thing the statistical models don't show us, although I did note that ClearSight Analytics is adding this

and has added it in some categories already, time and space. And so you can create all these plays. And I think we've seen this in Stanley Cup playoffs too, where you can measure different types of plays and attach a value in terms of high danger, mid, low, how often that goes in based on where it is on the ice and what type of play it is.

But whether the guy receiving that pass has time to sip a cup of coffee, put his head up and look for a spot, or whether he's got a back checker with a stick on his hip or his hands or his waist, like somewhere, you know, these are different things. And at the end of the day, I feel like the devils who are still a bottom third,

you know, bottom third of the league defensive team by the numbers we can measure, some of the habits, especially of their top young players, need to improve defensively. I think we've looked at other teams that have made that leap in the past couple of years. We have one here in Vancouver, where you've finally had the young players sort of buy into some of those

defensive staples and the environment improved even, like, measurably, statistically, but even more so. And I feel like the devils are in that spot. And so the great question is, yes, we can look at last year's stats and Jacob Markstrom seems to be a, you know, fits like a glove. Yeah. My question is how much better are they defensively

or are they or does Sheldon Keefe as a new coach get that buy-in to the systems change? Does it take a period of time? I guess the good news is you've got a new goaltender trying to adjust to a new system and if there are significant system changes that all be trying to learn it at the same time. And that, I mean, I don't know if that's a good thing

but you could argue it's at least at least he's not the only one trying to figure it out. I mean, the comparisons from a personnel perspective between the early Leafs teams when Sheldon Keith took over, right, and then this devil's team he's inheriting are pretty neat, relatively speaking. Obviously different players, right? Your mileage on them might differ. But just in terms of this young, highly skilled, offensively oriented group.

And when he took over that Leafs team, in particular, I remember for those like Jack Campbell Campbell years when he was thriving and then before he got his UFA contract. The defensive environment improved massive. so much. Particularly, I thought, like, even the, you know, the public metrics did reflect it, but probably didn't even bake into it enough because I thought that was actually an area they excel time and space, right? Kind of like a structural diligence in terms of insulating the goalie to make the stops easier for them, right? They were still giving up from, like, high danger areas, but I thought it was much, much more sort of NHL-level defense in terms of,

like, we're going to pressure you and you're not going to get a clean shot off even if it is from a high-danger area of the ice. And I think that would represent a massive, improvement for the devils. We've sort of documented how along the way they regressed this year, partly due to injury, but they were controlling less of the play in their own offensive zone. And so what happened was they were giving up a lot off the rush, and then their goalies were not really making those stops or giving up rebounds, and then just chaos ensued from that,

particularly early in games. They kept going down one, two, nothing, and then it was tough to overcome. Yeah, and we talk about defense and defending it a lot as sort of a reflection of what happens maybe through the neutral zone and in your own zone, but it starts with what, you know, for a pool player or a snooker or whatever, it's what you leave, right? And so if you're turning pucks over in bad areas,

that's how you end up producing. Like what you do offensively, what you attempt to do offensively, can have a significant impact on what you give up defensively. Again, we just lived it here in Vancouver with the Canucks, like so much focus on how much better defensively they were. And a bunch of that was guys like J.T. Miller Not turning pucks over at the blue line and giving up three-on-ones the other way on a, you know,

two or three times a night basis. So we saw Keith, you know, the Leafs went from a team that everybody thought relied too heavily on goaltending to one that frankly, you know, just needed average goaltending under Keith. And so if he can flip that switch in New Jersey and Markstrom can thrive being a little less busy in a more controlled environment. Because at the end of the day, and this was the argument for not trying to acquire Markstrom if you're L.A., were you getting the most out of him in. a sort of low event defensive environment

or is he at his best when he's busy? And so that's the other flip side of this. Like, yeah, New Jersey wasn't a great defensive team and they hoped to get better defensively under Sheldon Keefe. But Calgary Flames, at least for the first two-thirds of the season, after the coaching change, were one of the worst defensive teams in the league. They showed improvements as a year went on,

but that was when Markstrom was at his best, right? So that sort of Superman dive, stopping bulletin, in your teeth, we need an acrobat type save that he's capable of giving you, the question is do you get those, can he find the timing of those if he's not as busy and will he be, he's going to be less busy

in New Jersey, how much so? Well, and I think that's part of the appeal here in terms of the fit from New Jersey's perspective. I think certainly the volume should be better than it was in Calgary and even better than it was for Devil's Goalies last year. I imagine that high danger element will still be in play because

at the end of the day, with the composition of this devil's team, at their best, they need to be playing off the rush, right? I think they want to be more versatile and well-rounded and controlling the play, and they hopefully will, but you have Jack Hughes, you have Jasper Bratt, you have electric players who want to be moving up and down the ice. We know that when the pucks don't go in off the rush for you, you're probably going to give up some rush stuff coming back the other way, and so Markstrom will be exposed to that. We feel pretty confident, right, that as confident as you can be, whenever projecting a goalie's play,

especially switching teams, that he'll be better suited to hold up in that environment, right? Not in terms of the volume, but just if he's subjected to a handful of rush shots or high danger chances along the way in any given game, we feel a certain level of confidence that he will be able to hold up under that, right? Yeah, I mean, his numbers are better in,

every goalie's numbers are better in the zone. But even if you factor it just for rush transition rush chances. His numbers, his adjusted numbers drop somewhat significantly from plus one and a half to like plus 0.6%. But again, again, so does

everyone's. It is on the positive side of the ledger. It's actually 11th in the NHL for everybody who faced, you know, 400 plus of those types of chances last year. And when we filter it sort of down even further for the most dangerous types of chances, which is kind of, I think, what we're talking

about here. You know, it's like, like, his high danger stuff off the rush is like off the charts good. Like, you know, top five, top 10 in the NHL and consistently is. So, yeah, we like the fit. I just, I think there's a hedge there, right? Yeah, of course. Because you never know. You just never know.

There are so many different factors. And there's so much it goes into a goaltender reading off his defense. It's more than just systems. It's individual habits. It can take months to get comfortable behind, you know, knowing when a certain guy is going to try and pinch off a play or pressure on an odd man rush. And those things can take a little bit of time.

The other part of the fit I like, at a time when you mentioned Schistairkin might reset the market, you know, at a time when Ilya Sorokin sort of seemed to a little bit with an $8.5 million last year and then wasn't his team starter come playoffs. Yep. You know, again, at the risk of that, can we have your goal of union card back, Mr. Woodley? I have said all along the one thing I would avoid is a GM is term

because of the volatility of the position right now. And you do that with Marshroom. And because Calgary's eaten, what, 31 and a quarter percent, his cap hit at 4.125 going into next season, like of the guys under contract, I think sort of grades out 21st or 22nd amongst goalies in the NHL. I'll take that bet versus overpaying in free agency and arguably having even more uncertainty in terms of the fit.

Well, especially with Jake Allen there as well for one year, right? It accomplishes that as well where we've spoken about how with Markstrom, you want to be careful about his usage. You don't want him getting like with any goalie, but I feel like him especially so you want to keep him in that 45 to 55 game range, I'd say you don't want to be getting too extreme because his technique will drop a little bit and they'll start making some kind of uncharacteristic fatigue-led mistakes. and so they're suited to do that

while, you know, hoping to accomplish two things at once here, right? Have their cake and eat it too in terms of getting a heightened level of play next year, but also not being so pot committed to it where they're going to have to pay for it on the back end, right? Like if they can get good performance next year, all of a sudden the year after, you can see where you're at. You can add a different goal because Alan himself will be a UFA,

Markston will be expiring with that lower cap here. Hey, don't ignore. Like, I just, like, I like the guys they have. I like Nico Dawes and the progression. Like we forget that he's like only what second year pro last year. I mean they just use them too much, right? They just put them in situations that, you know, the NHL has increasingly become,

and we've talked about this, a development league for young goaltenders, but those guys, you know, even the goalies that get put in those spots, they were younger than most of them in that case. And so a chance for them to breathe for a year in the American League. I actually got to meet their American Hockey League goalie development coach,

Brian Eklund at a, sorry, USA Hockey Symposium this summer and really enjoyed that interaction. Scott Clemenson up top, Dave Rangelski in the NHL coaching. They've got a real team approach there. And I think they knew that those two guys needed more time. They're going to get that time. And then if one of them's ready or both them were ready in a rotating fashion, and Jake Allen does move on after this season,

there's a pretty good mentor in terms of what it takes, work ethic, all those things, and Jacob Mark Sherman. you know, even if just one of the two hits, like I see a nice progression there that frankly hasn't been there for a while. It's funny how I've kind of come around to this idea because initially, you know, you sort of, you scoff at when you're watching a game and the broadcast goes, oh, remember that save or, you know, this goalie makes well-timed saves, like clutch ones are at the right time. I think that can be a bit overblown because chances are if you're a position to make those saves, like something good is happening along the way, whether it's the

quality of your team or stuff you did before that were discounting because it didn't happen at the end of a game. At the same time, though, I've come around to the idea that particularly early in games, just not being demoralized by your goal tending, is such a massive quality. And that's what I felt last year. And I know that you, as a member of the goal union, are going to point to the defensive environment to mistake some of their young forwards were making, all that stuff. And I'm not dismissing it. But you watch a game. I actually wasn't going. Like, if you give up a bad goal, man, like the shoulders start sagging, you start making

then uncharacteristic mistakes because all of a sudden now you're playing from behind, pushing for offense, three minutes into a game, and it's just not the way you draw it up heading into it. And I think you can't discount what that means, especially if it's happening, like literally every single night for that. Well, Markstrom

brings a level of confidence. You know, he should inspire confidence in the group. And the way he works in practice will help do that. But if there's one sort of question that Calgary Flames fans will tell you about. Yes, especially the year before, right? It's a tendency to give up early ones. Right.

And some of them, you know, in the low to mid, you know, percentage variety. And so his teams quickly learned that he'll stop the door from that point on out. But it's ironic that you bring that up. And that's sort of one of the few, you know, bugaboos to the profile statistically of Jacob Markham is those early first period goals and early shot goals. Yeah, it was two years ago, right? I think it was like eight or nine times. I think there might have been a bunch this year too. I just know like doing radio in Calgary that it comes up a lot.

And it's interesting, you know, I mean, but then again, like they've got a good team there. You know, Marty Breder is a part of it as well. Like their goaltending department is like four or five deep if you include Marty in it. And Marky's a guy that leaves no stone unturned. So if there's something preparation-wise that is leading to that, you know, you trust that they'll maybe figure that one last little thing out or help him do so. You got any other stuff on either Markstrom or this fit here? I know it's kind of fresh on your mind because you're preparing a big piece for it,

written wise. And we should say, like the listeners should be excited about this episode. I think they always are when you come on. The Discord is always buzzing. But you've got access to Wi-Fi right now. You've got the stats up. You're tinkering here.

You're pulling stuff up on the fly. Well, I mean, this is like a couple like things where we talk about, you start digging into the microstats. Like the devils gave up, but I think they were the third worst team in terms of breakaways. And breakaways aren't just all from the, you know, center ice in like one-on-one chances down low off a turnover,

blue line in, partials, half-ice. They were, I think, the third worst team in terms of giving them up, and it's one of Markstrom's, like, statistical strengths. Another one of his statistical strength is slot-line play. So east-west play. He's, you know, he's one of the best goalies in the league has been for a while at managing those, and the devils are, again, bottom-third in the league, around 20th.

But what surprised me to look up is their goalies actually out-per, Like as much as Markstrom outperformed on slot line plays, so did the devil's goalies last year, which, you know, I know you've talked before about East West stuff with them. Statistically, at least they're like plus 11 goals and seventh in the league. So there's an area where what they give up, at the end of the day, every team wants to limit those more than they do.

And at least you have Markstrom who tends to do well against them, but I was maybe a little surprised to see so were the guys that were there already. So it would appear to be a perfect fit, and I don't know how big a bump it's. It's going to be statistically at the end of the day. How many more goals does he say? But he will look aesthetically a little more pleasing to your eyes, Dimitri, when he does.

Well, I'm excited about that. I would posit without having looked at the numbers you're referencing there that a lot of that heavy lifting was done by Nico Dawes and Akirishmead because I don't think I saw Vitek VTchok stop a single one of those last year. I'm sure, you know, in the fine print, you'll find that he did stop a few of them. But I'm exaggerating for effect. But it was a very tough watch. And so I think there is an element.

of whether you want to say it's confidence or whether habits in front of the goalie that I think will be inspired by just having Jukal Marksstrom that are going to have positive impacts beyond the saves he makes. And I think a lot of that's ones that you referenced because I may have been on the receiving end of the odd text message on these

are we can sub-categorize them even further, low slot line play. So stuff that comes off from below the net, pop pass and then across, and that's a play. Teams try and create a lot behind the net, across, pop pass, and then across again. like a lot of goals just can't keep up to that.

And when we filter Markstrom's numbers for slot line plays, everything looks great. When we filter them further and be like, okay, amongst those slot line plays, where, you know, where did Jacob excel the most? And, oh, what do you know? Low slot line passes. So stuff below the hash marks, things that maybe they weren't as good at as a team. and I think when you look at the eye test and a guy whose net play system

looks a lot like Bobrovsky's looks a lot like Demco like he's got that in Clark net play system sort of down to a T we shouldn't be surprised by that so there's an area where you have to go even further it's not just enough to say oh slot line east west it's what type of slot line plays

and when you get into the everything below the hash marks well Markstrom excels even further and that's an area where you know those examples you cite that's where it all seemed to be from. Well, without talking to them, I would suspect that it's not a coincidence that those numbers match up the way they did based on what I know about the devils. All right, let's move on to Darcy Kemper and the Kings before we go to break,

and then we'll do some goalies that haven't moved yet and some speculation on that. We saw him get flipped for Pierluke Dubois. It was a one-for-one. I'll save the PLD analysis for a future show because that's going to require a full breakdown of its own. But I think the Kemper part of this is interesting, right? Because he's got three more years at 5. 225. These are his age, 34, 35, and 36-year-old campaigns. He was very solid, I thought, in his first year in Washington, right? He played 57 games. He stayed healthy. He had a 90-09-sa percentage around a net

neutral expected goal sale above expected according to sporadic. I'm not sure what you had him at at ClearSight. But the wheels really fell off this year, right? And part of it was he got hurt a bunch. He only played 33 games. He had an 890 save percentage, minus 13 goal save above expected. And I think most importantly, he lost his job along the way, right? And part of that was because our shared favorite here, Charlie Lingren, played remarkably well. But I thought they really rode him into the ground as the year went along. And they were, listen, they were kind of on that playoff bubble, right? They were playing for a playoff spot their season was on the line.

And the reason why I bring that up is because I do think it's telling from a team perspective how they felt about both guys. And it kind of speaks volumes to the fact that even when Kemp, came back, they were just playing Lingren as much as humanly possible, right? Like, they played him in that back to back at the end of the year. I think his efficiency did start to slip because he's just never played this much before. And so I'd expect Lingren to bounce back and be really good again next year. But from Kemper's perspective, it makes sense that they were ready to move on from him here. And I think part of this also ties into dynamics of sort of making the money work with the PLD side of

things. But I'm kind of curious for your take, I guess, on where we're at with Kemper now and then what that's going to look like in LA because it's a pretty nice kind of favorable environment he's stepping into for a variety of reasons we've spoken about in the past weeks and months. But where are you at with Kemper? He's a guy that, you know, has been consistently good throughout his career when healthy. And you add the win healthy caveat because we saw what happened in the plan. I mean, you won a cup. But after the eye injury, he wasn't. the same goalie. And that's an example that people are going to point to in terms of, you know, goaltender performance relative to Stanley Cup championship. Like he ranked amongst the lowest,

you know, in that playoffs and still ended up lifting a trophy. His numbers fell off a clip this year. Only one goalie was worse from a goal saved expected. That was Arvid's Solderbloom, 97th out of 98. And I just, knowing his game and sort of some of the consistent elements that are his foundation. Like he's not a guy that relies heavily on rhythm or timing or feel. Like there's a really good technical foundation there. And so

there shouldn't be this much variance, which leads me to believe that it was probably injury related. And I should probably make a phone call or two here. Should have before we came on the air just to confirm that because I know people involved with that staff. I think it's a fair educated guess. I mean, given the number of injuries, I mean, what worries me about the injuries is

you wonder sometimes whether they're purely or if they're related to something like quite often we see a lot of groin injuries we end up with a hip problem which isn't something that gets fixed fast or easy especially in your 30s right so um I'm willing without having any inside knowledge to assume that that was largely the case here darcy's been like I said a good to great you know he was a guy that when Colorado acquired him I was like you know yay this is awesome like this guy's numbers have been you know good elsewhere he just needed this opportunity so let's see I mean at the end of the day he's watching

into a spot where it's a goalie-friendly environment. Again, assuming they can maintain that, because we heard some frustration from players about the style they played at the end of the season. So that is a defensive environment that every goalie wants to be a part of. He's still going to get pushed. David Ridditch had some really good adjusted numbers and a much smaller sample size to the point where,

as much as I liked Cam Talbot as a fit there, I was a little surprised they didn't go to him earlier in the playoffs just based on some of the under. underlying numbers I had access to. But, you know, look at what Talbot did there. He was an all-star. I know there were some ups and downs and inconsistency. But that environment favors goaltenders, and I would expect Kemper, you know,

whether the adjusted stuff looks the same or it's just the raw stuff. The raw stuff's going to get a lot better. Yes. Just by being, A, if he's healthy with the Los Angeles Kings. And just before you switch topics, I got to say, our favorite guy, Charlie Lindgren, for a lot of different reasons here on the PD. Eocast, but also shout out. Once you're done listening here, Ingole magazine, Ingole radio podcast.

You know, it plugs halfway through the show. Charlie Lindgren is our feature guest this week. And he did a video, an hour-long video breakdown session where we walk through film. And I actually quickly discovered one of the reasons he's so good. His off-ice is off-puck awareness. Watch him next time you have a chance to watch film. How many times he looks off the puck to identify threats before a pass is made? finds those soft spots in the ice in a corner where a guy's got his back turn,

scans the zone, finds where the threats are. It's one of those things that we don't look for often enough that I think I'm starting to recognize more and more in guys that have this upside is their ability to identify plays because they're not stuck puck watching. Well, we talk a lot about how forwards are starting to lap goalies a little bit in terms of their training. Goalie IQ is...

No, but here we are scanning. This is something that has become a really big deal, especially when you're talking about prospects, right? If like, all right, how's this defenseman going to translate at a higher level? You go back, you're scanning for potential threats, outlets, all this stuff before the puck ever gets to you, right? Similar thing here that you're talking about with goalies where it makes sense that you're identifying potential risks or things that you need to keep an eye on before it happens rather than waiting and sort of reacting and being too late, right? You've got to be anticipatory. Yeah, your awareness off the puck has to be so high.

And I think it's one of the things, you know, like not to tie it into the Stanley Cup final and the Stanley Cup playoffs, but when you see Stuart, at Skinner sort of off and on and especially where he struggles off the rush and at times when plays are below the goal line is he doesn't look off the puck enough. And so when a pass gets made, he almost looks surprised by where it's going as opposed to being able to identify those threats

and push right to them. We've seen a couple goals in these cup finals where he's pushed to a spot and that wasn't the spot where the guy was and he's had to adjust mid-push or try and recover. And I think even when he makes some of those saves, if you rewind it and look at that lack of,

scanning that lack of awareness, even some of the ones he makes look funky because of it. Right. Listen, I was joking. All Charlie Lingren content is welcome here, so I'm glad you got that plug in. And people should definitely check that out. Love Charlie Lindgren. Back on Kemper here for one note, you sort of reference the goalie environment and Camtalbot in particular.

I just wanted to point out that a 36-year-old Cam Talbot last year, Sportologic had him in a negative goal save above expected at the end of the year and he's still finished with a 9-13 save percentage which in today's climate is unbelievable considering the league average was like whatever 903 or 9-04 and in that volume of starts to have that disparity kind of reflects what we saw where they were fourth in team say percentage second and expected goals against fourth and interslot shots but i do think that's a relevant point you make about the frustration with that personnel group after the season and all the exit interviews the changes we've already seen them make i know they're bringing back the same interim coach, but I would expect them to hopefully open up the offense a little bit

and take some more risks and try to be more modern and what impact that's going to have on the goaltending. Now, the big caveat being if you can stay healthy, I would expect that Darcy Kemper will look much better in this situation and will succeed based on everything we've seen from 36-year-old Camp Tabba last year and to countless examples along the way. But it's a big caveat. You put regular season Darcy Kemper from, actually I wish I could pull it up, but from, but I remember his number sort of that, the regular season in Colorado, like being around plus 1%. Yeah. Into Talbot's expected, say, percentage last year at 909 was the highest I've seen in a long time in the national hockey league.

You know, like all of a sudden you're talking about not just a bounce back for Darcy, but if that were to happen, that's a big if, because both things are sort of require some dominoes to fall in the right direction. you'd be talking not just about, you know, an all-star at the break, but a guy who'd be in the awards conversation because you'd be running a say percentage up close to 930. Okay, Kevin, let's take our break here. When we come back, we'll jump right back in. We've got a list of names that I want to get through with you while you're still here. You're listening to the Hockey P.D. Ocast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network.

We're back in the Hockey Pee-O-Cast joined today by Kevin Woodley. Kevin, we've talked about the moves that have already have happened. Jacob Marks from to the Devils, Darcy Kemper, to the, to the kings. Let's talk about some next dominoes to fall, and I think the most logical one is going to be Linus Allmark, based on his level of play the past couple years, based on the fact that the devils, I think, were one of the teams most closely linked to him as a potential suitor, and now that they're kind of off the board, having gotten their guy in Markstrom,

I think all attention is shifting to see what the Bruins do with him. We've seen Ottawa reference recently as a very viable candidate in a team that's potentially interested in him. There's a lot of smoke there. There's a number of other teams that I think are similarly interested. Let's get into Allmark's game a little bit here and sort of his strengths, maybe his relative weaknesses, where he'd fit best and kind of where you'd personally like to see him from a situation of where he'd actually kind of thrive because obviously he's been in a pretty good spot in Boston the past couple years and been able to succeed in it. now I'm curious to see what that looks like in a potentially inferior environment

and whether we see that I think is up for debate. Yeah, like I think it might surprise some people to know, and this isn't sort of anything at all anti-Geremy Swayman because you're probably not going to find a bigger Jeremy Swayman fan than me. And I can see why they started him in the playoffs and you saw how he did and you see sort of the upside, the athletic upside that he brings. but on the regular season in a whole with some pretty

evenly matched chances against sort of amount they played and expected say percentages that were within a couple points of each other lenis actually outperformed Jeremy in the regular season his adjusted save percentage was

0.3 higher and not significant gap but he was so like this idea that he fell off a cliff I don't think holds true Now, the standard he set the year before when he was no questions asked, the Vezna Trophy winner, and deservedly so, you know, it was almost double that rate. So it's not like, like Linus Allmark didn't necessarily lose the number one job so much as that was a choice by the Bruins. And it, like I said, it reflected well because Swainman played outstanding. But this is still a very high-end goaltender, guys who, a guy whose numbers, you know, still graded out just outside the top 10 and the National Hot. hockey league an adjusted say percentage in a split workload.

Are there questions about how much more he could or should play? And when I say questions, like, I'm not even answering in the affirmative that he shouldn't or couldn't play more because he hasn't had the opportunity. He hasn't needed to with Swayman there. But I think you're seeing him at his best in that 50 range top. So it means whoever's acquiring him needs to make sure they have a second option. He's never played 50 games in the HL regular season. Yeah.

So there you go. and in terms of his expected say percentage was you know it was a little bit like four points higher than the league average so it wasn't like last year obviously it was higher than that and he outperformed it

by an even bigger margin so they were a good but not quite to the same level defensive team and he still outperformed it any goal he's going to be better in a good defensive environment the question is like it's it's in the extremes that we start to run into questions like new jersey right like if they're going to give up a bunch off the rush that they want more of an acrobat than lenis might be and so you know i'm kind of curious to see where he ends up and see where the interest is i've you know seen

the rumblings um you know about about ottawa's i think we all have uh you know high danger chances against you know they're expect yeah they're 22nd mids 23rd and then low's fifth like you're really good at not giving up easy chances, which means you're probably too good at giving up the middle and hard. Teams aren't settling for it. Yeah, it's a tough, it's a tough spot. Now, interestingly enough, one of the areas they got killed at was they weren't giving up a lot of low danger chances.

Like, they weren't giving up the easy ones, and their goalers weren't stopping them either, like 29th against low danger chances. And that's one thing. So we talked earlier about the bad goals and the ones that kill. that kill you as a team and have everyone on the bench sort of sagged their shoulders, they've been given up to many of those, and Lieness won't.

Like that's one of his strengths. Now, again, within that, to get back to that time and space, because I see Ottawa similarly to the discussion around New Jersey, they have a lot of really talented young players that still need to learn how to not give up the type of chances that give opponents time and space and how also maybe you've got to lean on guys a little bit and take away some of it yourself.

So they're a team that needs to take a big step defensively. Linus would sort of, he would give you a higher floor than I think you're getting. But if you're asking him for that ceiling, I don't know that as constructed you have the team to get the absolute best out of him. And frankly, again, like any goal he's going to struggle when you're in the bottom third of the league

and mid and high danger chances against. Yeah, on the Boston note, I mean, it makes sense that they would regress defensively when Patrice Bergeron retires, certainly. They lost a bunch of talent. I will, and I think the quality of just having Swayman and Allmark play 82 straight games, like, I think tricked people a little bit into being like, oh, Boston's still good defensively when a lot of the underlying numbers did start to slip in a road. They did. What I will say, though, acknowledging that, I think in that Bruin system, because of the continuity along the way, there's a level of sort of like predictability, kind of like controlled environment aspect to it, which I think bodes very well for any goalie,

but especially what you're saying about Allmark, where it's very easy for him to sort of settle into that rhythm and then start to make higher difficulty saves along the way because he's already got that foundation under him. That might go out the window if he goes to a team like Ottawa, so that'll be an interesting thing to know. Yeah, I mean, high danger chances against Boston was still top 10 in the league. Yeah. Mid they were 19th and low they were 16. So like, yeah, it's a big drop-up. especially to go from top 10 and high danger chances. And as you said, knowing where they come from

because there's a predictability to it within the structure and system and the guys executing it versus a team that's not only giving them up at a, you know, more than double the rate, but less predictable manner, less controlled manner, less, you know, a keyword we hear in Vancouver a lot over the last year and have a less structured manner.

Yeah, it's interesting because on the one hand, I certainly, I think like you and I are both kind of skeptical of the Corpusalo contract at the time it happened, right? I think we even said as such it was just way too big of a commitment in my opinion for pretty much any goalie. But the lesson here is like Corpie had a really good

he started, he came off hip surgery his body finally worked for him. He had a really good start in Columbus. But then I feel like they paid for the results he had in L.A. and we just talked about Camp Talbot and Darcy Kempir and expectations and how like you can still play well but the reality is

your ceiling is way higher because your expected say percentage the floor is so much higher than anyone else in the league when you're playing behind a king's team like that. And it feels like Ottawa went out and paid for that guy based on the results he put up in L.A. And it just, you know, again, it's actually a great example of you can't expect him to, and we said it at the time.

You can't expect to be in Ottawa who he was in L.A. because he's not playing behind the same team. And it's kind of like chasing your own tail, right? Like what's happening there where there's a variety of reasons, certainly. but it's like regardless of the names and there's been a lot of names who have played in that for Ottawa over the past six, seven years,

you're still not getting what you think you otherwise could then you see them go somewhere else and all of a sudden, yeah, these guys are actually pretty competent in H.L. Goleysl. They can play in a different environment. Philip Gustafsson. Phil Gustafsson, Joey DeCord. Like there's like, you go on down the line. There's been a bunch of guys and

I think it goes back to what you're saying there and I think that's nail on the head where like they're public metrics this year Ottawa's were improved. Like they weren't catastrophically bad. Their say percentage was 30th, I believe, as a team. Their goals against is right there with like the four tanking

teams in the league. Yeah, that's their bottom third instead of bottom three. Yes. And that's a big improvement. And that is a big, right? Like you should be able to get passable results based off of that. The issue for me is the time and space thing I think needs to be baked in more here because just watching them there is kind of like a bit

of an unsurious defensive element there where it's a lot of guys. Immature would be a word. Unserious immature. Taking very soft routes, not closing off guys, time and space, and other teams just getting to basically walk into their shots, getting to be very selective on what they want to get. And so that's a big issue. Again, why they don't give up many low danger chances

because teams are able to like, well, I'm not going to waste one here when I can just hold on to the puck and find a better one. Yes. And so that would concern me here. I do really like all mark as a goalie. Now, I get at the end of the day, you're addressing the symptom, you're not curing the disease if you think goaltending is fixing it. Yes.

Especially for a goalie who has never, as we said, played for 50 games. So all of a sudden, even if you're bringing in. He has played behind bad teams. He has. He's got that experience. He's adjusted numbers in Buffalo were one of the reasons Boston went and got him and saw that upside in him. And I think he's made improvements in his game since then.

So he's played on bad teams and had relative success. Most of us couldn't see this success though because the team was bad. And so, you know, again, I think in Ottawa we had this year, year was goaltending that underperformed a bad environment. I believe Allmark is perfectly capable of outperforming a bad environment and he has done so in the past. I just don't know that until you fix the environment, I don't know that you're going anywhere. Yep. Let's talk about a couple other fits. So I saw one

that was interesting to me and it's Utah. Now Utah is a team that I think is going to be linked to every single player imaginable this summer. They've all the caps space in the world. They have all the caps face. They have every single second round pick the next three years that you could possibly have, even more so, I'd argue, they literally cannot roster all those prospects. And they have a new owner and they're in a new city, right? Like, they're going to be splashes. The only thing missing is an actual NHL building, but I digress. It is, but I think there's a nice talent there, right? Like, especially on the forward group, we've talked a lot about the skill there. Like, I will see what they do with the blue line.

I'm a huge believer in the coach and the way he works and how he integrates the goaltenders into how his team plays. Now, what will be interesting to me is a potential swap a ballmark for Vemalka, obviously Arizona, Utah, the hockey club in Utah would have to include at least one, if not a couple of those second rounders, a bunch dip into their draft capital

a little bit, which I think would be appealing to Boston, considering their lack of it over the past couple years. Emphasis on a little bit, if Jacob Archham was the bell of the ball, that return was not overwhelming. No. Well, I think it speaks to the suppressed market, right? We talk about it in free agency terms of a goal that becomes available.

teams don't want to commit that much of them. I think the same concepts apply on the trade market where you're not going to commit all these premium assets to a guy you don't want to pay. The irony there to me is, well, I'm digressing here a bit, but the irony to me is Marksham should have been more attractive because he was percentage retained and it's only two years. Yes.

But it was a made 30s goalie who had control over where he goes. Now it was reported that he would embrace a couple different spots so it wasn't necessarily limited to just New Jersey. Let's just say that any reporting that said he was willing to go back was not correct. Yes. And look at you, insider Kevin there. I don't know. I think you would have actually stayed in Sweden. That's how much he wanted at a Calgary. I think the thing with goalies, though, is we all agree that it's the most

valuable position. And we see it, right? If your goalie's not making saves, like you're not going to win games. It's as simple as that. It's a make or miss thing. If you don't make saves, you give a bad goals, you're going to lose. You're not going to win a Stanley Cup. Welcome to the goalie union, Dimitri. I just have no confidence in who that's going to. going to be. And also, like, it's fair. We were just talking about Darcy Kemper and obviously injuries compounded that. But in the same summer, they gave him, what, 26 million? They gave Charlie Lindgren, 3 million over three years. And he significantly outperformed him, usurped him, and now is going to get paid off of that. And so, but that was somewhat predictable.

It was. You at the time you were saying, you at the time, you were, Charlie Lindgren was a great fit. We were in a we work office and you highlighted him as your favorite signing of that Aussie sign. I said that would be the best signing of that summer. The problem is, and it's not even a problem. Like, I understand it. It's the same reason that Edmonton had to go get Jack Campbell, because you couldn't have a team you saw as a cup contender, whether Washington was or wasn't. They wanted to see themselves as that, given who they had around their goaltending, especially Ovechkent, you couldn't just not have a number one goaltender. Like, it's really easy for me to sit here and say, yeah, just go get

Charlie Lindgren, but what general manager is going to tie the other like 75 million dollars he has invested in his team to a guy who's never been a number one gold in him before. So the pressure was to go get a Darcy Camper. The pressure in Edmonton was to go get a Jack Campbell, even though all the numbers said you had a better shot with a Charlie Lindgren at upside. And then in Jack Campbell's case in particular, a lot of the numbers that led to the contract were Sheldon Keith's defensive environment with the Toronto Maple Leafs at the time. You know, like that his whatever was 920 was actually 30th in the NHL when you adjusted for shot quality.

And so it's really easy for me to sit here and go through a list of guys I think could hit and are ready to hit. But I'm not the guy that puts my job on the line if they don't get a plan B. And in the case of Washington and Edmonton that year, spend a lot on a plan B as a a number one and have it not work out with the other guy. And sometimes, I don't know that we get Stuart Skinner to where he is now if Jack Campbell isn't there last year to take some of the heat and to take some of the focus off. So all these points, like there is no easy answer here. And that's why the guys making these decisions make a lot more to you and I. But they don't have more fun than

we do. Nobody has more fun than we do. And so that's an important distinction. Just to close the loop on the Elmark point, I am intrigued by the idea of similar to what Boston did, having 82 games of Connor Ingram and Linus Allmark in that for next season. I really like that. A very appealing option. Pretty much 50-50 split. Try to replicate what Boston did. Obviously, you have to build around it.

But I think that's a pretty interesting foundation to start with for next year. The other team is Carolina. Although, as we were talking before we went on air, I for some reason was under the impression. So is that. Freddie Anderson was a UFA this summer? And he actually is owed $3.4 million for one more year. And then Kouchekov's obviously signed for three more years after this and should get a bigger share of the workload.

I see because of Anderson's, you know, last year was sort of a freak health scare. So I don't want to kind of chalk that up to one of these like accumulation injuries. I think that was an isolated event. But I think he has shown that not necessarily the most reliable option in it, especially as a workforce. You just can't overplay them. You can't like and I said it even. We talked about this going into the playoffs.

I said I thought we'd see Kochetkov early in that series, much like we talked about tandums and playing both guys, that was one I highlighted just because, and I know it's really easy to say, well, because of the blood clots, he didn't play all season, so he's got a sort of low mileage for the year, but I just felt like you needed to give him breaks,

and I honestly felt like they waited a little too long to do so. And as the games piled up, the precision in his technical game started to dissipate, and you saw, you know, puck spanked in off of them, because he was making the wrong save selection or he got outside of his post and things that weren't happening when he came back refreshed. And so I still think he's perfectly capable of being a number one goal tenor. I think Gochadkovka made massive strides throughout this season.

And you might have a perfect situation there for this year. With your break glass in case of emergency Spencer Martin, assuming you get him to the miners, signed as your number three. Like, you know, assuming you have a – Do they have a place to put their number three now? I can't remember. Chicago. go. Anyways, I actually, I know they're a team that's been linked to some other goalies

and trades. I don't mind running in back with Freddie Anderson and Coach Hedgoff. It's a conundrum because similar to what we just said about the Kings, if you build this environment where you can almost plug and play to an extent, you don't want to then pay a premium for what's a luxury item, right? If you feel like, all right, for relative, you know, minimum price, we can get above league average, say, percentage, give a our defensive environment. I get that. Man,

Linus Lomark on that team, we're talking time and space and a lot of the shots coming from low danger areas would have another Vesna Troika season. He'd have like a 9.30s 8 percentage. And that's a very tempting thing to me. Now you don't want to fall into the trap

of paying a premium for that and I imagine Boston wouldn't be that excited about moving in there. The only thing missing on Linus Lema's resume is sort of playoffs. Yes. And I think there was an injury that sort of plagued him last year into the postseason, but

can you can he be a difference maker come playoff time? Which, you know, to tie this back to Carolina, like that's essentially what they need. I just think over playing Freddie limited his chance to consistently be that difference maker these playoffs. We've got

five more minutes here. Now, listen, we're going to have you back maybe after the like dust settles on free agency. It'll be one of our final shows this season like we did last year and we can talk about all the stuff that happened after the fact and we'll break it all down. I do want you to give the listeners one of Kevin's quote unquote guys this year because the track record of Charlie Lingren of Connor Ingraham dating back a couple of years has been phenomenal.

There's going to be some obviously the big names we talked about and we can include Soros and Gibson and even Elvis Mersikins if you want to include into this. But then there's going to be a bunch of sort of lesser name options or kind of guys that are going to fly under the radar a little bit that I know you're going to have an eye on and if they fall in the right spot you're going to love that fit. is there someone, whether it's a Stolarz, a Ned, Brasois, I mean, you've talked about Lankin and even though he regressed a little bit last year. You know, like, you know what, Lankton had ever picked in, I got some chances to play down the stretch. Like, he's probably my guy this summer.

Yeah. Yeah, like, I'm going back to him, not to go back to the well. Where do you think he's to C.C. the most? Like, is there somewhere? Oh, I liked him in L.A. Yeah. I mean, they solved that riddle, but they also play with a little backflow. You know what?

Kevin Lankin and in Boston, there are some things about the way they play and the way they coach and teach there, that I think he would fit there very well. So, like, if, for example, you move Allmark, you're not quite sure. I think, I really believe that they're high on Boosie and the minors, but maybe you want to leave him there another year.

I haven't checked his waiver status, but I always believe if they have time, use it. Kevin Lankin is a guy that I think could come in and have a lot of success in Boston in an elevated role. I never fully understood why he didn't get a few more minutes, like especially this year, where at least statistically, and no, I'm not pretending that Kevin Lanken is better than UC Soros.

That is not what I'm saying. Don't lose your mind, Preds fans. But statistically, on a per shot basis, he outperformed him this year. And so there's a guy that for a couple years in a row I've had an eye on. The Preds obviously saw the same thing, re-signed him for a year. Now with Ascaroff, they've got to make a decision here.

And assuming they keep UCSaurus, which has always been my assumption, and Lincoln it hits the open market. That's a guy that, you know, I would, I mean, is this expected say percentage was five points below the league average, and his results were, you know, his results were right up there with Linus Allmark on the season, on a per shot basis in a slightly, a significantly worse environment. So he's my guy on that list. I mean, there's lots to like about persuas and Stolars, if he can stay healthy, had the second high adjusted say percentage in the entire league this year. So in the right environment, you know, there's a little buyer beware there because Florida's a nice environment.

We've seen other guys. I'll give you another name. Not for like he's going to jump into a number one spot, but I do believe he's an NHL goalie with still lots of upside, and he's kind of gotten lost in the shuffle of a major injury and one bad season behind a team that wasn't actually ready to compete. Chris Dreger is an NHL goalie, and I believe a team that's going to roll the dice on him in a 1B roll,

especially the right fit, could end up being very pleasantly. by the results they get. I like that. Okay, I'm going to hold us to circling back to this after the bus settles and we'll talk about the best fits and where guys went. Anything you want to plug? You already plug the Charlie Lindgren. Yeah, just do any of them else?

Charlie Lindgren, we've spent some time traveling at Ingle magazine this summer. We have a bunch of fantastic interviews, which is free on the Ingo Radio podcast coming. Charlie's up right now this week. We've got Alex Lyon, who was just a fat, like just loved talking to him. about his path and the way he sees the game that's coming up and both guys stuck around and did a video review session with me so our pro reads which is where we sit down and watch goalies make saves and they explain why they choose the positioning they do the technique the save selection what they're looking for off a rush what hand guy is you know where he's holding his stick like

all the information that will help you become better as a goalie at reading the game NHL goalies sit down and watch video every week with us and share that we've got Lynn Gran added, we've got Lion added. We already have Hellebuck, Demko, Elmark, a lot of the names we've talked about have done video with us. I think we have 10 with Linus Elmark and his Vesna Trophy winning season where he sits down

and watch his video. There's no better way to become a better goalie. Check it out at ingoldmag.com. Awesome, buddy. I love that. Keep up the great work. Looking forward already to getting you back on and chatting about this stuff. Thank you to the listeners for listening to us. Give us that five-star review wherever you're listening to show. Pop into the P.D.O.cast Discord so you can chat about

all the takeaways from all of Kevin's appearances as the people in there typically do, and we'll be back with plenty more of the Hockey PEO cast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network.